Page 176, line 17. Skinner's-street. Skinner's Street, projected by Alderman Skinner, was built in 1802. It ran from Newgate to Holborn Bridge, occupying (except for its gradient) the site of that part of Holborn Viaduct which now lies between Newgate Street and the viaduct proper over Farringdon Street. At No. 41 Mrs. William Godwin had established her Juvenile Library, which put forth the Lambs' books for children. Skinner Street wholly disappeared in 1867, when the Holborn Viaduct was begun.

Page 176, line 19. Lardner. Nathaniel Lardner (1684-1768), the Unitarian theologian, whose great work was On the Credibility of Gospel History.

Page 176, line 23. The five points. The five points of doctrine of the Calvinists, namely, Original Sin, Predestination, Irresistible Grace, Particular Redemption and the Final Perseverance of the Saints. After these words came, in the London Magazine, the following paragraph:

"I was once amused-there is a pleasure in affecting affectation—at the indignation of a crowd that was justling in with me at the pitdoor of Covent Garden theatre, to have a sight of Master Betty-then at once in his dawn and his meridian-in Hamlet. I had been invited quite unexpectedly to join a party, whom I met near the door of the playhouse, and I happened to have in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steevens's Shakspeare, which, the time not admitting of my carrying it home, of course went with me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pressure of the doors opening—the rush, as they term it—I deliberately held the volume over my head, open at the scene in which the young Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly read by the lamp-light. The clamour became universal. The affectation of the fellow,' cried one. 'Look at that gentleman reading, papa,' squeaked a young lady, who in her admiration of the novelty almost forgot her fears. I read on. 'He ought to have his book knocked out of his hand,' exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms were too fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to execute his kind intention. Still I read on-and, till the time came to pay my money, kept as unmoved, as Saint Antony at his Holy Offices, with the satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins, mopping, and making mouths at him, in the picture, while the good man sits undisturbed at the sight, as if he were sole tenant of the desart.—The individual rabble (I recognised more than one of their ugly faces), had damned a slight piece of mine but a few nights before, and I was determined the culprits should not a second time put me out of countenance."

Master Betty was William Henry West Betty (1791-1874), known as

the

Young Roscius," whose Hamlet and Douglas sent playgoers wild in 1804-5-6. Pitt, indeed, once adjourned the House in order that his Hamlet might be witnessed. His most cried-up scenes in "Hamlet" were the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, and the fencing scene before the king and his mother. The piece of Lamb's own which had been hissed was, of course, "Mr. H.," produced on December 10, 1806; but very likely he added this reference as a symmetrical afterthought, for he would probably have visited Master Betty much earlier in his career, that phenomenon's first appearance at Covent Garden being two years before the advent of Hogsflesh.

Martin B

Page 176, line 32. "Snatch a fearful joy." From Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College." Page 176, line 32. Martin Charles Burney, son of Admiral Burney, and a lifelong friend of the Lambs-to whom Lamb dedicated the prose part of his Works in 1818 (see Vol. V., page 42, and note).

Page 176, at foot. A quaint poetess. Mary Lamb. The poem is in Poetry for Children, 1809 (see Vol. III. of this edition). In line 17 the word "then" has been inserted by Lamb. The punctuation also. differs from that of the Poetry for Children.

Page 177. THE OLD MARGATE HOY.

London Magazine, July, 1823. This, like others of Lamb's essays, was translated into French and published in the Revue Britannique in 1833. It was prefaced by the remark: "L'auteur de cette délicieuse esquisse est Charles Lamb, connu sous le nom d'Eliah."

Page 177, line 15. I have said so before. See "Oxford in the Vacation," page 8.

Page 177, line 18. My beloved Thames. Lamb describes a riparian holiday at and about Richmond in a letter to Robert Lloyd in 1804. Page 177, line 22. Worthing... There is no record of the Lambs' sojourn at Worthing or Eastbourne. They were at Brighton in 1817, and Mary Lamb at any rate enjoyed walking on the Downs there; in a letter to Miss Wordsworth of November 21, 1817, she described them as little mountains, almost as good as Westmoreland scenery. They were at Hastings-at 13 Standgate Street-in 1823 (see Lamb's letters to Bernard Barton, July 10, 1823, to Hood, August 10, 1824, and to Dibdin, June, 1826). The only evidence that we have of Lamb knowing Worthing is his "Mr. H." That play turns upon the name Hogsflesh, afterwards changed to Bacon. The two chief innkeepers at Worthing at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of its prosperity were named Hogsflesh and Bacon, and there was a rhyme concerning them which was well known (see notes to "Mr. H.” in Vol. V.).

Page 177, line 24. Many years ago. A little later Lamb says he was then fifteen. This would make the year 1790. It was probably on this visit to Margate that Lamb conceived the idea of his

sonnet, "O, I could laugh," which Coleridge admired so much (see Vol. V., page 4).

Page 177, line 29. Thou old Margate Hoy. This old sailingboat gave way to a steam-boat, the Thames, some time after 1815. The Thames, launched in 1815, was the first true steam-boat the river had seen. The old hoy, or lighter, was probably sloop-rigged.

Page 177, at foot. That fire-god. Vulcan (see the Iliad, XX.-XXI.), which tells how the Trojan river rose to destroy Achilles, but Vulcan was sent by Jove to beat back water with fire.

Page 178, line 14.

Ariel.

Like another Ariel.

Now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flamed amazement.

"The Tempest," Act I., Scene 2, lines 196-198.

Our enemies.

whom

Page 178, fourth line from foot. Lamb refers here to the attacks of Blackwood's Magazine on the Cockneys, among he himself had been included (see note on page 323). In the London Magazine he had written "unfledged" for "unseasoned."

Page 178, next line. Aldermanbury, or Watling-street. In the London Magazine Lamb had written "Thames, or Tooley Street."

Page 179, line 18. Princess-Elizabeth. This would be Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse Homburg (1770-1840), daughter of George III., who from her gift of drawing was known as "The Muse."

Page 179, line 29.

"Ignorant present."

Page 179, last line. The Reculvers. The western towers of the old parish church of Reculver, on the Kentish shore of the mouth of the Thames, bear this name among navigators.

Page 180, line 16. Margate... Infirmary. Bathing Infirmary, opened in 1796.

Page 180, line 24. Pent up in populous cities.

a recollection of Milton's

As one who long in populous city pent.

The Royal Sea

Almost certainly

Paradise Lost, IX., line 445.

Page 181, line 12. Plata . . . Orellana. Plata, the River Plate. The Orellana is the Amazon. In Thomson's Seasons we read of "the mighty Orellana.” The quotation that follows, " For many a day is from that poem-"Summer," line 1004, &c.

Page 181, line 16. "Still-vexed Bermoothes." Tempest," Act I., Scene 2, line 229.

From "The Another recollection of

Shakespeare occurs in the next lines, where Lamb remembers the Archbishop of Canterbury's simile in "Henry V.," Act I., Scene 2, lines 164, 165:

As is the ooze and bottom of the sea,
With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries.

Page 181, line 20.

"Be but as buggs . . .”

From Spenser's

Faerie Queen, II., Canto XII., Stanza 25. "fearen."

"Frighten" should be

Page 181, line 36. Gebir. Gebir, by Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), who was a fortnight older than Lamb, and who afterwards came to know him personally, was published in 1798.

Page 181, line 38. This detestable Cinque Port. A letter from Mary Lamb to Randal Norris, concerning this, or another, visit to Hastings, says: "We eat turbot, and we drink smuggled Hollands, and we walk up hill and down hill all day long." Lamb, in a letter to Barton, admitted a benefit: "I abused Hastings, but learned its value."

Page 181, last line. Fresh streams, and inland murmurs. There is little doubt that Lamb was recalling Wordsworth's lines “Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey"

:

Again I hear

Those waters rolling from their mountain springs
With a soft inland murmur.

He remembered also Psalm xlii. 1.

Page 182, line 9.

Neptune.

Page 182, line 15.

Mesech" (Ps. cxx. 5).

Page 182, line 32.

Foolish dace. A recollection probably of

Isaac Walton's characterisation of this fish, in The Complete Angler, where the dace and roach are grouped together in opposition to the cleverness of the carp.

Page 182, line 38.

"To read strange matter in."

Lady Macbeth. Your face, my thane, is as a book where men

From

Page 183, line 19. "The daughters of Cheapside

Thomas Randolph's "Ode to Master Anthony Stafford":

The beauties of the Cheap and wives of Lombard Street.

The reference to Lothbury is probably in recollection of Wordsworth's "Reverie of Poor Susan," which Lamb greatly liked.

We learn from the Letters that Lamb had a severe nervous breakdown in the early summer of 1825 after liberation from the India House. Indeed, his health was never sound for long together when he became a free man.

Page 184, line 11. Mare Apertum. John Page 186, line 16.

Mare Clausum. A closed sea, as opposed to
Selden wrote a book with this title.
Lernean pangs . . . Philoctetes.

Hercules

dipped his arrows in the bite of the Lernæan hydra and their wound

was incurable. They were bequeathed to Philoctetes, who on the voyage to Troy wounded himself by chance in the foot with one, and the sore grew so noisome that the Greeks marooned him on Lemnos. But he had to be fetched thence by Diomed and Ulysses before Troy could be taken: and in the play by Sophocles which represents this fetching, there is a strong presentment of his pains. Page 186, line 31. "What a speck

I do not find this.

Lamb may have been thinking of Falstaff (in "1 Henry IV." III., 3.) Bardolph, am I not fallen away vilely since this last action? do I not bate? do I not dwindle?"

Page 186, line 34.

Page 187, line 1.

In Articulo Mortis.

"At the moment of death." Tityus. Tityus, the giant, covered nine acres

when he lay on the ground.

Page 187, line 4. Insignificant Essayist. In the London Magazine essayist" was monthly contributor.'

Page 187.

SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS.

New Monthly Magazine, May, 1826, where it appeared as one of the Popular Fallacies (see page 252) under the title, "That great Wit is allied to Madness; beginning: "So far from this being true, the greatest wits will ever be found to be the sanest writers . . ." and so forth. Compare the essay "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare," Vol. I., page 97. Lamb's thesis is borrowed from Dryden's couplet (in Absalom and Achitophel, Part I., lines 163, 164):

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

Page 187, line 14. Cowley. The lines are from Abraham Cowley's "Ode on the Death of Mr. William Hervey," Stanza 13.

Mistake. In the New Monthly Magazine

Page 187, lines 34, 35. Kent . . . Flavius. Lamb was always greatly impressed by the character of Kent (see his essay on "Hogarth," Vol. I., page 72; his "Table Talk," Vol. I., page 346; and his versions, in the Tales from Shakespear, of "King Lear" and "Timon").